Ladybird hoop

The lovely selina at Lacey May’s haberdashery recently sent me a couple of 5″ embroidery hoops. I’ve used smaller sized hoops before in mixed media work and the 5″ size was just perfect for the gorgeous Woodware Ladybird stamp from Francoise Read. I adore Woodware stamps and have used them for many years for personal and class work, there’s such versatility in the designs and they are great quality.

For this project I stamped the ladybird in black versafine clair and embossed with clear powder. I then used my Kuretake Gansai Tambi watercolours to paint in the red, these paints are awesome, I love using them. I repeated this process twice so I could die cut the centre to decoupage on top.

The background of the main image is coloured and with distress oxide evergreen bough and water techniques.

I knew I wanted to add stitching as with previous projects, so I added black stitching and the button to the top circle.

Playing about with the calico I thought it looked great with the bulk at the bottom almost looking like she’s wearing a skirt, this is where i get lost in my creative thought process. I simply used a few cross stitches to attach the ladybird circle to the calico.

Button, threads, safety pin and sequins finish the project, the sequins have black french knot circles to represent the ladybird spots!